The icy, dusty comets of our own Solar System scream into Earth’s night sky from regions so far away that our Sun’s fiery, fiery light and stellar heat are almost unheard of. In the twilight of an endless icy darkness, the tiny frozen comet nuclei of our Solar System remain as relics of an ancient time when planets were first forming, from a multitude of colliding chunks of material called planetesimals–the building blocks of planets. While the short period kites reside in the cold semi-darkness of the inner region of the scattered disk He called the kuiper belt, located beyond the orbit of the outermost major planet Neptune, the long period kites dwell in the Oort cloud. Tea Oort Cloud is a thousand times further than him kuiper beltIt is believed to be a huge layer of dancing icy comet nuclei that surrounds our entire Solar System, extending to the middle of the nearest star. But a very special new comet, discovered on August 30, 2019, has proven to be an especially exciting discovery for astronomers:Comet C / 2019 Q4 (Borisov) is a family visitor from another star, and is only the second interstellar vagabond of its kind to be detected.

This icy wanderer from a star far, far away, was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov in the MARGO Observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea. Borisov used his custom-made 0.65-meter telescope to make the important discovery of this incoming interstellar visitor. Comet C / 2019 Q4 (Borisov) it has a heliocentric orbital eccentricity of approximately 3 and is not gravitationally bound to our Sun. At the time of discovery, it was incoming about 3 to of our star and about 3.8 to from the earth. One au (astronomical unit) it is equivalent to the average Earth-Sun separation of about 93,000,000 miles. The comet came from the direction of the constellation. Perseus near the border with him Cassiopeia constellation and very close to the galactic plane of our Milky Way. Will travel closer to the sun (perihelion) around December 8, 2019.

At the time of this writing, an official confirmation that the comet C / 2019 Q4 It is an interstellar comet that has yet to be made. However, if it is interstellar, it would only be the second object detected. The first, nicknamed Oumuamua, was observed and confirmed in October 2017. C / 2019 Q4 (Borisov) it shows a hyperbolic speeding of approximately 34 kilometers per second. This is a strong indicator that it is an interstellar visitor to our Solar System, as speeds below 3 kilometers per second can result from disturbances.

Still stepping into the sun C / 2019 Q4 (Borisov) it will stay farther than the orbit of Mars and come no closer to our own planet than about 190,000,000 miles.

After the first detections of the comet, SCOUT system– found at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, it automatically designated the strange object as possibly interstellar. Dr. Davide Farnocchia of NASA Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at JPL he collaborated with astronomers and the European Space Agency (ESA) Near-Earth Object Coordination Center in Frascati, Italy, for additional comments. He then collaborated with the NASA sponsored Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in order to derive the exact trajectory of the comet and thus determine if it was born within our own Solar System or if it came to us from another part of our Milky Way.

“The current speed of the comet is high, around 93,000 mph, which is well above the typical speeds of objects orbiting the Sun at that distance. The high speed indicates not only that the object probably originated outside our Solar System, it will also. Exit and return to interstellar space, “commented Dr. Farnocchia on a September 12, 2019. JPL press release.

Interstellar rolling stones

In our own Solar System, comets are the leftover relics of myriad ice planetesimals that served as “seeds” from which the four outer gaseous planets eventually formed: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Similarly, asteroids, found primarily (but not exclusively) in the Handheld Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter – they are similar to rocky and metallic planetesimals that collided with each other and merged in the primordial Solar System to form the quartet of solid inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Because comets exist in the icy, dimly lit freeze of our Solar System beyond Neptune, they retain in their icy hearts the original elements that formed our Solar System some 4.56 billion years ago.

Until the discovery of Oumuamua In 2017, comets in our own Solar System were the only ones known to exist within it. Yet small and dark Oumuamua it was revealed to be the first known interstellar visitor to invade our Solar System. Oumuamua came from roughly the same direction as the star Vega in the Lyra constellation. Also, the direction of the incoming reddish Oumuamua it was precisely what extraterrestrial objects would likely take in when they flew into our Solar System from elsewhere. On October 26, 2017, two previous observations by Oumuamua, dated October 14 and 17, 2017, were obtained from the Catalina’s Sky Survey. A two-week observation verified a strongly hyperbolic trajectory, with hyperbolic overspeed of about 58,700 miles, its speed relative to our star when it is in interstellar space. Tea Catalina’s Sky Survey searches for comets and asteroids, and is carried out in the Steward Observatory Catalina Station near Tucson, Arizona.

In mid-November 2017, astronomers were sure that Oumuamua it was an invading object from space between stars. Observations made over a 34-day period confirmed By Oumuamua the orbital eccentricity should be 1.20. An eccentricity greater than 1.0 suggests that an object has exceeded the escape velocity of our Sun. This means that the object is not gravitationally bound to our Sun and is coming from somewhere else. By Oumuamua The eccentricity is so high, in fact, that it could not have resulted from an encounter with any of the planets in our Solar System, known or unknown. This is because even if there are undiscovered planets lurking beyond Neptune, they couldn’t explain By Oumuamua trajectory. Yes Oumuamua had a close encounter with one of these undiscovered remote worlds, still couldn’t have sped up Oumuamua up to the observed speed. This was another strong indicator that Oumuamua originated in the family of a star beyond our Sun.

New visitor

C / 2019 Q4, currently on an inbound trajectory, is heading into the inner Solar System. On October 26, 2019 he will fly through the plane of the ecliptic, which is the plane in which the Earth and the other planets orbit our Sun. The alien comet will rise above the plane of the ecliptic at approximately a 40 degree angle.

C / 2019 Q4 it received its designation as a comet due to its fuzzy appearance. The fuzzy appearances suggest that the object has a central icy body that is creating a surrounding cloud of dust and particles as it travels closer and closer to the bright light and melted heat of our Sun, and warms up. Its location in the sky (as observed from our planet) places it close to the Sun, which is an area of ​​the sky that is generally not scanned by large ground asteroid studies or NASA’s asteroid search. NEOWISE spacecraft.

The alien icy object can be observed with professional telescopes for many months. “The object will reach maximum brightness in mid-December and will continue to be observable with moderate-sized telescopes until April 2020. After that, it will only be observable with larger professional telescopes until October 2020,” noted Dr. Farnocchia at the September 12. , 2019 JPL press release.

Observations that were made by Dr. Karen Meech and her team at the University of Hawaii further indicate that the nucleus of the alien comet is between 1.2 and 10 miles in diameter. Astronomers will continue to collect observations to further characterize the comet’s physical properties, such as size and rotation, and also gain a better understanding of its trajectory.

Dr. Meech thinks the comet C / 2019 Q4 will be able to provide more new information about these icy interstellar vagabonds than its predecessor, Oumuamua. This is because Oumuamua It gave the astronomers just one week to make critical observations, narrow down the data, and write a paper outlining their new findings. But, with kite C / 2019 Q4astronomers have much more time to make their observations and gain a new understanding of these celestial wanderers who visit our Solar System from far, far away, and are the dislodged children of a star beyond our Sun.